Motivate Yourself

Get the Life You Want, Find Purpose and Achieve Fulfilment

Andro Donovan

• Publisher: Capstone
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780857086907
• eBook ISBN: 9780857086990
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Do you want to feel more productive, more present and more inspired by your own life?

Motivate Yourself offers practical strategies to improve your productivity and gives you the know how to create the life you want. Learn how to move past your self-doubt and propel yourself into living your dream.

With practical exercises featured within each chapter, this book will help break those emotional barriers that hold you back and set you on the path to becoming fully engaged and more productive.

Kick start your productivity journey today and:

• Quieten that negative inner voice that inhibits your personal growth
• Wake up to the possibility and opportunity of a different way of living
• Learn how to motivate those around you with productivity at the center of everything you do
• Challenge yourself to discover who you really are and what you are truly capable of achieving

Part One
Discover Yourself: A Journey to You

1
Mind Your Values

‘Those who look outside dream, those who look inside awake.’

Carl Jung

At the heart of a truly fulfilling personal and business life there will always be a set of strong core values. The question is: Do you ever give yourself the time and permission to stop and ask yourself what matters to you?

Discovering your essential values

Becoming more conscious of your values gives a strong sense of identity for you, your life and your career. If you have chosen a career that is a vehicle for generating money, but does not provide you with any personal satisfaction, maybe it's time to reconsider. Values provide focus and direction for (in this instance) financial success and give your desires more meaning.

So what about you? Let me ask you again: How do you feel about getting connected to your true values so that you can live a life that will make you happy and fulfilled?

I warn you, this process can be life changing. You may change your business, re-evaluate your friendships and find your soulmate, take better care of your health and show more affection to those around you. Ultimately, it will be your choice. With values comes choice. With choice comes change. And with change comes growth.

Now, how do you feel about leaping into the world of values? Ready? Put your mind, body and soul into first gear and let's go!

What are values?

What drives most people is a yearning to improve the quality of their lives while at the same time remaining true to themselves. Becoming conscious of what fundamentally drives you is not always obvious. While you are busy running on the treadmill of life, you will undoubtedly miss and potentially suppress those hidden drivers that are a powerful force within you.

Connecting to your deepest values, the ones you hold most dear, will give you the renewed energy, motivation and impetus to live your life more fully.

Consider the following questions:

• What is my life's purpose?
• What is my unique contribution?
• What will I be remembered for?
• What makes me feel alive and vital on this planet?

These four questions will be answered over the course of the book, starting from the position of values.

While answering these questions you will inadvertently start to connect to what is important to you, the quality or essence you can't live without. Although you may have been hitherto unaware of these hidden drivers, not knowing them can be – in the worst case scenario – a contributing factor to an overall sense of meaninglessness.

Many people tend to chase goals only to find that when they achieve them there is a strong sense of anticlimax. When this happens, they get a fleeting moment of happiness and joy that is rapidly followed by ‘what's the next question?’ Living a life that is disconnected from your values may lead you to pursue goals that will not ultimately satisfy nor nourish you longer term.

It's a bit like going for a sugary treat or pick-me-up when we are hungry for a proper meal. We go for the biscuit or bag of crisps only to find out we are still hungry. We have not been properly nourished so we begin to crave more and more junk food that will never feel satisfying.

Connecting to your core values and activating them in your day-to-day life is the fastest way to feel nourished and the most motivating and direct route to personal fulfilment and satisfaction.

Values act like a compass and guide you towards your life's purpose and true north. Values are your pure essence – that which is you and your essential self. Knowing your values and acting in accordance with them provides focus and direction in the choices you make, the roles you take on, the jobs you choose and the way you use your leisure time.

Expressing your essential values

One of the most life-enhancing exercises I have ever done was getting in touch with my key drivers and values and then creating a life where I experienced and expressed them on a daily basis. This does not happen overnight; it is an ongoing process, where the learning comes from the journey rather than reaching the ultimate destination.

When I first started to contemplate the bigger ‘why’ questions, I thought I knew who I was and what my values were, but I didn't. My mentor kick-started a process that set me on a highway to confusion armed with only a set of abstract adjectives: you name it, I valued it. I valued courage, honesty, respect and integrity. However, none of these were, in reality, my core values and they were in fact utterly meaningless. They were too easy to choose.

In the ensuing personal chaos, I felt deflated and as though I was on a roundabout with no clearly marked exit signs. When I tried to work out which direction I should travel in, all the roads seemed equally inviting yet somehow closed. At every junction there was a roadblock or another dead end. As I turned to face another potential road, misleading signposts appeared everywhere. Then, and only then, did I put on the brakes and allow myself to connect to the essence of who I thought I was.

I have come to realize that life is an adventure, and this has helped me to grow as a person, as a mother, as a facilitator and as an executive coach. Today I am clear about what my values are. I know what the most effective means are to fast-track me to achieving them and what the end result of remaining faithful to the essential me is.

Imagine living every day with a certain inner knowledge and allowing your values to pull you effortlessly along an invisible thread towards a life of fulfilment.

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My watershed moment – A fish can love a bird but where will they live?

Have you ever felt like a fish out of water? As a young woman fresh out of college deciding on what to do for my gap year, I remember believing that ‘girls like me do not go backpacking around the world'. I came from a very sheltered and conservative background. Girls like me did not go travelling to strange countries unescorted. It would be far too dangerous and inappropriate for a single girl. No, what we do is find a nice steady job, just to get some useful work experience, preferably not too far from home.

This is precisely what I did. I obtained a job in a local government careers office. My job entailed interviewing young people and cajoling them to go for a job or, if I could not place them in any of the available jobs, signing them up for benefits. This role provided me with two amazing insights:

• First: I realized that the part of the job I enjoyed most was spotting the hidden talent and potential of these youngsters. Helping them to create a better life than the one they seemed destined to lead. Rescuing them from a life of benefits to a life of employment and contribution gave me a strong sense of purpose.
• Second: I did not fit into the environment I found myself in. Everyone around me was a civil servant working out how they could have a sick day or a training day to get out of working. It was not so much that they were demotivated; they were just playing the system for anything they could get away with. It was an entrenched culture that was at loggerheads with everything I believed in. They were not dishonest or bad people; they just did not seem to want much out of life. It appeared to me that they were happy in their 9 to 5 mentality.

It was a huge challenge in this stale culture to get any buy-in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Part One: Discover Yourself: A Journey to You
• Part Two: Free Yourself: What Gets in the Way of Your Happiness?
• Part Three: Motivate Your Life: Design the Life You Want to Live
• Donovan's Ten Motivational Principles
• References
• Resources and Next Steps
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• EULA